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“We’ll have to get you up to bed,”
said the latter, rising slowly and dusting himself.

Mr. Scutts, who was lying full length on the floor,
acquiesced, and sent his wife for some neighbours.
One of them was a professional furniture-remover,
and, half-way up the narrow stairs, the unfortunate
had to remind him that he was dealing with a British
working man, and not a piano. Four pairs of
hands deposited Mr. Scutts with mathematical precision
in the centre of the bed and then proceeded to tuck
him in, while Mrs. Scutts drew the sheet in a straight
line under his chin.

“Don’t look much the matter with ’im,”
said one of the assistants.

“You can’t tell with a face like that,”
said the furniture-remover. “It’s
wot you might call a ’appy face. Why, he
was ’arf smiling as we, carried ’im up
the stairs.”

“You’re a liar,” said Mr. Scutts,
opening his eyes.

“All right, mate,” said the furniture-remover;
“all right. There’s no call to get
annoyed about it. Good old English pluck, I call
it. Where d’you feel the pain?”

“All over,” said Mr. Scutts, briefly.

His neighbours regarded him with sympathetic eyes,
and then, led by the furniture-remover, filed out
of the room on tip-toe. The doctor, with a few
parting instructions, also took his departure.

“If you’re not better by the morning,”
he said, pausing at the door, “you must send
for your club doctor.”

Mr. Scutts, in a feeble voice, thanked him, and lay
with a twisted smile on his face listening to his
wife’s vivid narrative to the little crowd which
had collected at the front door. She came back,
followed by the next-door neighbour, Mr. James Flynn,
whose offers of assistance ranged from carrying Mr.
Scutts out pick-a-back when he wanted to take the air,
to filling his pipe for him and fetching his beer.

“But I dare say you’ll be up and about
in a couple o’ days,” he concluded.
“You wouldn’t look so well if you’d
got anything serious the matter; rosy, fat cheeks
and——­”

“I know,” said Mr. Flynn, nodding sagely;
“but if it was hurt bad your face would be as
white as that sheet-whiter.”

“The doctor said as he was to be kep’
quiet,” remarked Mrs. Scutts, sharply.

“Right-o,” said Mr. Flynn. “Ta-ta,
old pal. Keep your pecker up, and if you want
your back rubbed with turps, or anything of that sort,
just knock on the wall.”

He went, before Mr. Scutts could think of a reply
suitable for an invalid and, at the same time, bristling
with virility. A sinful and foolish desire to
leap out of bed and help Mr. Flynn downstairs made
him more rubicund than ever.

He sent for the club doctor next morning, and, pending
his arrival, partook of a basin of arrowroot and drank
a little beef-tea. A bottle of castor-oil and
an empty pill-box on the table by the bedside added
a little local colour to the scene.